Getting Started with PowerRUM

Getting Started with PowerRUM

Getting Started

Quest Software’s Migration Manager for Active Directory (MMAD) is an excellent tool for performing migration work. Although it is more commonly called QMMAD or simply QMM across the industry years after those initials are no longer correct, most people still refer to it as that. One of the most potent components of MMAD is its Resource Updating Manager (RUM). RUM allows you to process computers to prepare them to join the target domain. It also is the workhorse that moves the machines to the target domain while ensuring end users maintain a consistent desktop and have access to everything that they had access to before the cutover to the target domain.

It’s one downside is that in each of the move jobs, only one target OU/container can be selected. For many organizations, this is more than enough. For larger organizations, however, this is woefully inadequate and leads to the migration team having to run a job per OU. The difficulty here is a lot of clicking and ensuring that you choose the right OU for each computer. Perhaps realizing this and other issues, Quest released a PowerRUM PowerShell library specifically for working with RUM.

This article is the first in a series of articles on how to get PowerRUM working (this article) followed by a couple of articles on how we feel it is best employed in a large migration where dozens of target OUs may be in the mix. Although it is straightforward, we may cover some of PowerRUM’s features that don’t pertain to moves in the future.

Downloading & Installing PowerRUM

The great thing about downloading PowerRUM is that you already have! It is included in the download for MMAD under CD\QMMAD.

Once you install it by running the MSI, the default location of the install is C:\Program Files (x86)\Quest Software\Migration Manager\PowerRUM.

Using PowerRUM

PowerRUM is 32-bit. Therefore, you must use the 32-bit PowerShell to use it. These examples will all be using the ISE, and as you see here, I’m choosing the X86 32-bit version.

The Get-Command outputs all the PowerRUM commands for us. An excellent way to check to ensure that it is working is Get-RumConfiguration. You will get your server and project information.

Another command that I like Get-RumDomainCredential. A quick and easy view into the credentials that are set for RUM.

You can safely play around with any Get command as they only retrieve data.

Closing

Keep tinkering around with pulling data from MMAD. In our next installment, we will talk about import lists and then how can massage those lists with Excel or other tools and regular expressions, to make them PowerRUM ready.